Lobster Johnson: Iron Prometheus TPB Volume 1
© Dark Horse Comics
Mania Grade: A
Comic Trade: Lobster Johnson: Iron Prometheus
Issue: Volume 1 TPB
Author: Mike Mignola, Jason Armstrong, Dave Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse
Pages: Color, 140
Price: $17.95
Buy it now!
Comic Trade: Lobster Johnson: Iron Prometheus
Issue: Volume 1 TPB
Author: Mike Mignola, Jason Armstrong, Dave Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse
Pages: Color, 140
Price: $17.95
Buy it now!
Trade Paperback Review of Lobster Johnson: Iron Prometheus
By: Robert T. TrateReview Date: Friday, August 29, 2008
The year is 1937. Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich are conquering Europe for what he called “breathing room”. Halfway around the world the Untied States of America sits and waits. Was America really safe? Did the Nazis have agents in America? Of course they did. One mysterious figure stood in their way, a man who was ready to bring the burning claw of justice to all those that threaten the innocent. That man was Lobster Johnson.
Mike Mignola has brought the character of Hellboy to us for years. Big Red has battled Nazis, Russians, Demons and all those creepy crawlies that go bump in the night. Who battled evil before Hellboy though? Mignola’s brought Lobster Johnson to his mythology back in 1999. In September of 2007 Lobster Johnson debuted his first solo series. Lobster Johnson: Iron Prometheus TPB is the collected five issue run.
Lobster Johnson is out to find and protect Jim Sacks, the assistant of Professor Kyriakos Gallaragas who invented V.E.S. (Vril Energy Suit) Prototype which he is in current possession of. Sacks took off wearing the suit during an experiment while the Professor’s lab was being raided. Lobster Johnson finds Sacks and protects him from Nazi agents that are after the suit. Like all Mignola’s stories there is always someone else that is a greater evil in the story which is after what our hero must protect.
Nazis as villains, believe it or not, have become both cliché and boring. Sure Nazi agents looking for the V.E.S. suit in 1937 bring a perspective to the time and help establish the world inside the pages of Lobster Johnson. Much like Rasputin in Hellboy: Seed of Destruction there is another other worldly bad guy for Lobster Johnson to battle, an Asian looking mystic who’s plans are to bring yet another prophecy into fruition. This could be either seen as tiresome for Hellboy fans or part of Mignola’s ever unfolding Hellboy universe.
This is a great throwback story reminiscent to the days of The Shadow. It is also a great reminder of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. Here is a hero who isn’t perfect, doesn’t have it all worked out yet and is not world renowned. Lobster Johnson has a brilliant mind, connections and a great network of assistants that set him on par with The Shadow and Batman. Mignola does bring one other great iconic character to the fold in his creation of Lobster Johnson and that is Indiana Jones. The adventurer mixed with the scientist is ever present in the pages of Lobster Johnson. However, Mignola has left the humor of Indiana Jones out. The story is still dark like all of Mignola’s work but as it unfolded and each layer revealed the real villain I found myself saddened that is was all coming to end.
There became this need to learn more about the character. Thankfully, Mignola took a page from Alan Moore’s The Watchmen and his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and gave us the “The True History of Lobster Johnson “ at the end of several chapters. These stories reveal the strange history of the “character” and whether or not he may have been a “real” person. Mignola has multiple takes on his own character elevating him to an almost mythic status in his own Hellboy universe.
Where does Lobster Johnson fit into the Hellboy Universe? Recently Lobster Johnson has appeared in B.P.R.D. Volume 8: Killing Ground TPB (see review). He appeared from Johann Kraus’s fallen host body and saved Liz Sherman. More importantly the man plaguing Liz Sherman’s nightmares bares a striking resemblance to the other worldly villain at the heart of Lobster Johnson’s problems. So look for both characters to reappear in the either the pages of Hellboy or the B.P.R.D..
Mignola combined Conan the Barbarian and the Mighty Thor to create Hellboy. His mixture of Batman, Indiana Jones and The Shadow is another great cocktail of fiction’s greatest heroes. Lobster Johnson: Iron Prometheus is a fantastic story that is every bit a part of the pulp novels that inspired it.
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